PowerPoint Tip: Spreadsheets don’t belong on slides Frequently people tell me that financial presentations include a huge spreadsheet that has been copied on to a slide. The text and numbers are way too small and inevitably the presenter says, “I know you can’t read this, so I’ll read it to you.” Spreadsheets don’t belong on…
Tag: 2011
The audience wants the conclusion; Issue #250 December 6, 2011
PowerPoint Tip: The audience wants the conclusion In my survey this fall of what annoys audiences about bad PowerPoint presentations, the clear message you sent was that too many presentations suffer from information overload. Whether it is text, numbers, or a combination of both, the excessive information causes confusion and lack of action by the…
Creating universal icons; Issue #249 November 22, 2011
PowerPoint Tip: Creating universal icons When creating visuals, it can be helpful to sometimes use icons to represent items generically, such as people, cars, or objects. You could purchase vector icons from a site like istockphoto.com, but you can usually create your own custom icon using the drawing tools in PowerPoint. PowerPoint MVP Sandy Johnson…
Three lessons learned from Pecha Kucha; Issue #248 November 8, 2011
PowerPoint Tip: Three lessons learned from Pecha Kucha At the recent Presentation Summit, Ric Bretschneider did a session on Pecha Kucha, a presentation format that has gained a lot of followers in recent years. As part of his session, he asked a few people to volunteer in advance to demonstrate this technique. I was one…
Takeaways from the Presentation Summit; Issue #247 October 26, 2011
PowerPoint Tip: Takeaways from the Presentation Summit Last month I had the privilege of speaking at the ninth Presentation Summit in Austin, Texas. It is the one time during the year that the presentation community gets together and shares ideas and best practices on creating and delivering effective presentations. In addition to being a speaker…
Adding crosshatching fills to graphs in PowerPoint 2007; Issue #246 October 11, 2011
PowerPoint Tip: Adding crosshatching fills to graphs in PowerPoint 2007 When I was presenting a course for accountants in July, a number of the participants mentioned that starting in PowerPoint 2007, they had lost the ability to fill graph segments with crosshatch patterns. This is important when printing graphs in black and white since shades…
Results of the 2011 Annoying PowerPoint survey; Issue #245 September 27, 2011
Note: The results of the latest survey are available here. PowerPoint Tip: Results of the Annoying PowerPoint survey As I analyzed the responses and comments in the survey of “What annoys you about bad PowerPoint presentations?”, a clear theme emerged. Audiences are fed up with presenters who fill their slides with too much content and…
Amazing pre-made animation effects; Issue #244 September 13, 2011
PowerPoint Tip: Amazing pre-made animation effects At the end of this week I’ll be travelling to the Presentation Summit in Austin, Texas. It is the only gathering of presentation professionals and I look forward to seeing all of my colleagues and learning about the work they have been doing in the past year. One of…
How animating a graph makes it easier to understand; Issue #243 August 30, 2011
PowerPoint Tip: How animating a graph makes it easier to understand I spoke last week to a group of executives and one of the challenges that I saw in their presentations was the tendency to put spreadsheets on their slides when talking about financial topics. A graph is better than a spreadsheet to illustrate numeric…
Saving money on technology purchases; Issue #242 August 16, 2011
PowerPoint Tip: Saving money on technology purchases According to retail statistics, this time of year is now more popular for technology buying than Christmas. The back-to-school purchases for those heading to high school or college/university often include technology such as computers, software, tablets, and smartphones. Our kids have been using PowerPoint in school since grade…